Uptime.com Blog

Why Twitter Is Website Downtime’s Best Friend

When a lot of us were kids, we got into trouble. That trouble sometimes included breaking things, whether it was a lamp, a window, or something we knew was special to someone else in the house. During those times, there isn’t a kid that hasn’t thought: “If I can only fix it before Mom and Dad find out.”

That same mindset happens today with websites. When the website goes down, the idea is to fix it before any customers notice, pretending as if it didn’t happen. The problem is that if the company has a good website, there will be people coming to the site every second, if not faster than that.

Turn to Social Media

The key is to own a website’s downtime. While a website crashing can be incredibly stressful, not to mention costly, the key for businesses is to stay calm. It’s good to have an error page that can poke fun at the situation to add some levity. It’s also good to let customers know where they can find out information about the site’s performance. While there are lots of options, Twitter serves as the best one.

So Why Twitter?

Twitter benefits from its immediacy. A tweet can say the site is having problems and another one a few minutes later can say everything has been solved. It’s an easy way to stay in contact with customers on a platform many of them use. A company’s error page can even send people to a company’s Twitter stream in hopes that they will follow for more information outside of website crashes.

With Facebook and other social media accounts, there is not always that timeliness. Facebook features a unique algorithm and not all posts are treated as equals. It’s possible a company’s post will get lost on a timeline. That’s not to stay all forms of communication aren’t helpful when a site crashes, but Twitter works better than all others.

Companies can also directly communicate with customers, direct messaging customers that have extra questions or express concern with the outage. While downtime can be stressful, companies must make sure their customers aren’t forgotten.

Michael Esposito